DAVID BROOKS2025年7月23日Confidence. Some people have more of it and some people have less. Confident people have what psychologists call a strong internal locus of control. They believe they have the resources to control their own destiny. They have a bias toward action. They venture into the future.自信这东西，有的人多一些，有的人少一些。自信的人拥有心理学家所说的强大内控力。他们相信自己有能力掌控命运。他们倾向于付诸行动。他们敢于开拓未来。When it comes to confidence, some nations have it and some don’t. Some nations once had it but then lost it. Last week on his blog, “Marginal Revolution,” Alex Tabarrok, a George Mason economist, asked us to compare America’s behavior during Cold War I (against the Soviet Union) with America’s behavior during Cold War II (against China). I look at that difference and I see a stark contrast — between a nation back in the 1950s that possessed an assumed self-confidence versus a nation today that is even more powerful but has had its easy self-confidence stripped away.国家亦然。有些国家有自信，有些则不然；有些曾经拥有，后来却失去了。上周，乔治梅森大学的经济学家亚历克斯·塔巴罗克在自己的博客“边际革命”(Marginal Revolution)中，让我们对比美国在第一次冷战（对苏联）与第二次冷战（对中国）中的行为有何不同。在我看来，两者形成了鲜明反差——上世纪50年代的美国带着理所当然的自信，而今天的美国虽更强大，却已失去了曾经的从容。In the 1950s, American intelligence suggested that the Soviet Union was leapfrogging U.S. capabilities across a range of military technologies. Then on Oct. 4, 1957, the Soviet Union launched the first satellite, Sputnik, into space.20世纪50年代，美国的情报部门认为，苏联在多项军事技术领域正在超越美国。随后在1957年10月4日，苏联将第一颗卫星“斯普特尼克”送入太空。Americans were shocked but responded with confidence. Within a year the United States had created NASA and A.R.P.A. (later DARPA), the research agency that among other things helped create the internet. In 1958, Dwight Eisenhower signed the National Defense Education Act, one of the most important education reforms of the 20th century, which improved training, especially in math, science and foreign languages. The National Science Foundation budget tripled. The Department of Defense vastly increased spending on research and development. Within a few years total research and development spending across many agencies zoomed up to nearly 12 percent of the entire federal budget. (It’s about 3 percent today.)震惊之余，美国以自信姿态回应。一年之内，美国宇航局和高级研究计划局（也就是后来的美国国防部高级研究计划局）就成立了，后者催生了互联网等重大成果。1958年，艾森豪威尔签署了《国防教育法案》，这是美国在20世纪最重要的教育改革之一，加强了在数学、科学及外语方面的人才培养。国家科学基金会的预算增加了两倍，国防部大幅增加研发支出。短短数年，联邦政府研发总投入激增至预算的近12%（今天约为3%）。America’s leaders understood that a superpower rivalry is as much an intellectual contest as a military and economic one. It’s who can out-innovate whom. So they fought the Soviet threat with education, with the goal of maximizing talent on our side.美国领导人深知，超级大国较量是军事经济之争，更是智力竞赛。比拼的是创新能力。他们用教育手段来对抗苏联的威胁，目标是最大限度地发挥我们的人才优势。“One reason the U.S. economy had such a good Cold War was that the American university had an ever better one,” the historian Hal Brands writes in his book “The Twilight Struggle.” Federal support for academic research rose to $1.45 billion in 1970 from $254 million in 1958. Earlier in that century, American universities lagged behind their “best” European peers, Brands observes; by the end of the Cold War, they dominated the globe.历史学家哈尔·布兰兹在《暮光之战》(The Twilight Struggle)一书中指出：“美国经济在冷战中之所以表现出色，其中一个原因在于美国的大学表现更出色。”从1958年至1970年，联邦学术研究资助从2.54亿美元飙升至14.5亿美元。布兰兹注意到，在上世纪早些时候，美国的大学落后于欧洲顶尖学府，到冷战结束时，美国大学已雄踞全球之巅。Today we are in a second Cold War. For the first couple of decades it wasn’t clear whether China was a rival or a friend, but now it’s pretty clear that China is more a rival than a friend. As the scholar Robert D. Atkinson argued in The Times this year, for the Chinese regime, the desire to make money is secondary. “Its primary goal is to damage America’s economy and pave the way for China to become the world’s pre-eminent power,” he wrote.如今我们身处第二次冷战。过去二十年难辨中国是敌是友，而今其对手身份已昭然若揭。学者罗伯特·阿特金森今年在《纽约时报》撰文称：对中国政权而言，赚钱的欲望是次要的，“首要目标是损害美国经济，为中国成为世界头号强国铺路。”China is a country that, according a 2024 House committee inquiry, was directly subsidizing the manufacture and export of fentanyl materials, even though drug overdose is the leading cause of death among Americans 18 to 44.根据2024年众议院委员会的一项调查，中国直接补贴芬太尼前体生产出口，而吸毒过量已成美国18至44岁人群首要死因。Since the beginning of the 21st century, China has moved — confidently — to seize the future, especially in the realm of innovation and ideas. China’s total research and development funding has grown 16-fold since 2000. Now China is surging ahead of the United States in a range of academic spheres. In 2003, Chinese scholars produced very few broadly cited research papers. Now they produce more “high impact” research papers than Americans do, and according to The Economist, they absolutely dominate research in the following fields: materials science, chemistry, engineering, computer science, the environment and ecology, agricultural science, physics and math.21世纪以来，中国正以自信的姿态抢占未来，尤其在创新和思想领域。自2000年以降，中国研发总投入增长了16倍，现已在多个学术领域超越美国。2003年，中国学者鲜有广受引用的论文，如今其“高影响力”论文数量已超美国。《经济学人》杂志指出，中国在材料科学、化学、工程学、计算机科学、环境与生态学、农学、物理及数学领域占据绝对主导地位。These achievements of course lead directly to China’s advantages across a range of high-tech industries. It’s not just high-tech manufacturing of things like electric vehicles, drones and solar panels. It’s high-tech everything. In the years between 2003 and 2007, according to a study by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, the United States led the way in 60 of 64 frontier technologies — stretching across sectors such as defense, space, energy, the environment, computing and biotech. By the period between 2019 and 2023, the Chinese led among 57 of those 64 key technologies, while the United States led in only seven.这些成就当然直接转化为中国在众多高科技产业的竞争优势。不仅是电动汽车、无人机、太阳能板等高端制造，更是全方位技术突破。澳大利亚战略政策研究所的一项研究显示：在2003年至2007年间，美国在64项前沿技术（涵盖国防、航天、能源、环境、计算及生物技术等领域）中领先60项；到2019年至2023年，中国在57项关键技术上居于领先地位，而美国仅主导七项。The Chinese gains in biotech are startling. In 2015 Chinese drugmakers accounted for just under 6 percent of the innovative drugs under development in the world. Ten years later, Chinese drugmakers are nearly at parity with American ones.中国在生物技术领域的进步令人震惊。2015年，中国制药商在全球在研创新药中所占比例还不到6%；而十年后，中国药企几乎已经与美国同行平起平坐。Then along came A.I. Americans overall are fearful about it. Last year, the polling organization Ipsos asked people from 32 countries if they were excited for the A.I. future or nervous about it. Americans are among the most nervous people in the world. The countries most excited by the prospect of that future? China, South Korea, Indonesia and Thailand. The fact is that nobody knows what the A.I. future holds; people’s projections about it mostly reflect their emotional states. Americans used to be the youthful optimists of the globe. Not right now.接着就是人工智能时代的来临。美国民众普遍对其感到恐惧。民调机构益普索去年在32个国家做了一项调查，了解人们对AI的未来是感到兴奋还是担忧。结果显示，美国人对AI未来的焦虑居全球前列。最期待AI未来的国家是哪些？中国、韩国、印尼与泰国。事实上，无人知晓AI将带来什么，人们的预测多反映情绪状态。美国人曾是世界上年轻的乐观主义者，但现在不是了。Still, America has its big tech companies filled with bright young things charging into the future, so you’d think our lead would be secure. But over the past year, Chinese firms like Alibaba, ByteDance and Tencent have produced A.I. models whose quality is nearly equal to that of American models. DeepSeek has produced a model that comes in at a fraction of the cost of American ones. In A.I., as in military and economic might generally, the United States retains a lead, but China has a lot of momentum.尽管如此，美国仍拥有很多大型科技企业，聚集了一群才华横溢、勇闯未来的年轻人，所以你可能会认为我们的领先地位是稳固的。但在过去一年中，阿里巴巴、字节跳动和腾讯等中国公司已经推出了品质直追美国同类产品的人工智能模型。DeepSeek的模型成本仅为美国模型的一个零头。在人工智能领域，以及在总体的军事和经济实力上，美国仍然保持领先，但中国的发展势头强劲。The A.I. race is perhaps the most crucial one, because it will presumably be the dominant technology of the next several decades. “The No. 1 factor that will define whether the U.S. or China wins this race is whose technology is most broadly adopted in the rest of the world,” Microsoft’s president, Brad Smith, told a congressional hearing. “Whoever gets there first will be difficult to supplant.”AI竞赛或许是最关键战场，因为它很可能成为未来几十年的主导技术。微软总裁布拉德·史密斯在一次国会听证会上直言：“决定中美胜负的首要因素在于谁的技术能被世界更广泛采用。先发者将难以被取代。”So how is America responding to the greatest challenge of Cold War II? With huge increases in research? By infusing money into schools and universities that train young minds and produce new ideas? We’re doing the exact opposite. Today’s leaders don’t seem to understand what the Chinese clearly understand — that the future will be dominated by the country that makes the most of its talent. On his blog, Tabarrok gets it about right: “The DeepSeek Moment has been met not with resolve and competition but with anxiety and retreat.”那么，美国是如何应对第二次冷战这一最大挑战的呢？大幅增加研究投入？向培养年轻人才、孕育新思想的学校和大学注入资金？我们所做的恰恰相反。如今的领导人似乎不明白一个中国人显然明白的道理——未来将由最能充分利用自身人才的国家主导。塔巴罗克在他的博客中说得很对：“面对‘DeepSeek时刻’，我们没有展现出决心与竞争力，反而陷入焦虑与退缩。”Populists are anti-intellectual. President Trump isn’t pumping research money into the universities; he’s draining it out. The administration is not tripling the National Science Foundation’s budget; it’s trying to gut it. The administration is trying to cut all federal basic research funding by a third, according to the American Association for the Advancement of Science. A survey by the journal Nature of 1,600 scientists in the United States found that three-quarters of them have considered leaving the country.民粹主义者是反智的。特朗普总统没有向大学注入研究资金，反而在抽走资金。政府没有将国家科学基金会的预算增加两倍，反而试图大幅削减。据美国科学促进会称，政府正试图将所有联邦基础研究资金削减三分之一。《自然》杂志对1600名美国科学家的调查发现，四分之三的人考虑过离开美国。The response to the Sputnik threat was to go outward and compete. Trump’s response to the Chinese threat generally is to build walls, to erect trade barriers and to turn inward. A normal country would be strengthening friendships with all nations not named China, but the United States is burning bridges in all directions. A normal country would be trying to restore America’s shipbuilding industry by making it the best in the world. We’re trying to save it through protectionism. The thinking seems to be: We can protect our mediocre industries by walling ourselves off from the world. That’s a recipe for national decline.当年应对斯普特尼克威胁时，我们选择向外开拓、参与竞争。而特朗普应对中国威胁的总体策略是筑墙、设置贸易壁垒、转为内向。一个正常的国家会与除中国之外的所有国家巩固友谊，而美国却在四处树敌。一个正常的国家会努力让本国造船业成为世界一流，以此重振该行业。而我们却试图通过保护主义来挽救它。这种想法似乎是：我们可以通过将自己与世界隔绝来保护平庸的产业。这简直是导致国家衰落的秘诀。The problem is not just Trump. China has been displaying intellectual and innovative vitality for decades and the United States has scarcely mobilized. This country sometimes feels exhausted, gridlocked, as if it has lost its faith in itself and contact with its future.问题不仅仅在于特朗普。几十年来，中国一直展现出知识与创新活力，而美国几乎毫无行动。这个国家有时让人感觉疲惫不堪、陷入泥潭，仿佛已经失去了对自身的信心，失去了与未来的联系。In the progressive era, America built new institutions like the Food and Drug Administration and the Federal Reserve. During the New Deal, Americans created an alphabet soup of new agencies. By 1949, Americans had created NATO and the precursor to the World Bank. Where are the new institutions fit for today? Government itself is not great at innovation, but for a century, public sector money has been necessary to fuel the fires of creativity — in the United States, in Israel and in China. On that front, America is in retreat.在进步时代，美国建立了食品药品监督管理局和美联储等新机构。新政时期，美国人创立了一系列以首字母缩写命名的新机构。到1949年，美国人建立了北约和世界银行的前身。如今，适合时代的新机构在哪里？政府本身并不擅长创新，但一个世纪以来，公共部门的资金一直是创造力之火的必要燃料——无论在美国、以色列还是中国，都是如此。在这方面，美国正在退缩。Can confidence be restored? Of course. Franklin Roosevelt did it and Ronald Reagan did it. Is China’s dominance inevitable? Of course not. Centrally controlled economies are prone to monumental blunders.信心能够恢复吗？当然能。富兰克林·罗斯福做到了，罗纳德·里根也做到了。中国的主导地位是不可避免的吗？当然不是。中央集权的经济体容易犯下重大错误。But the primary contest is psychological — almost spiritual. Do Americans have faith in the power of the human mind? Are they willing to invest to enlarge the national talent pool? Right now, no. Americans, on the left and the right, have become highly attentive to threat, risk-averse and self-doubting about the national project. What do you do with a country with astounding advantages but that no longer believes in itself?但这场竞争主要是心理层面的——几乎是精神层面的。美国人是否相信人类思想的力量？他们是否愿意投入资源来扩大国家的人才库？目前来看，答案是否定的。无论是左翼还是右翼，美国人正变得高度关注威胁、规避风险，对国家发展计划充满自我怀疑。一个拥有惊人优势却不再相信自己的国家，该拿它怎么办？David Brooks是《纽约时报》专栏作者，撰写政治、社会和文化议题。欢迎在X上关注他：@nytdavidbrooks翻译：纽约时报中文网点击查看本文英文版。